


Someplace You've Never Been Before

by jessebee



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Original Trilogy (post-canon)
Genre: Angst, Don't ask me why you KNOW why, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, M/M, Memories, Outdoor Sex, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Relationship(s), Slash, Sleepy Cuddles, Totally finishing writing this instead of watching the election
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-29 23:34:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8509945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessebee/pseuds/jessebee
Summary: Some time after Endor, a stop-over on Tatooine sparks bittersweet memories for Luke. Han helps.





	

Breath stirred across the back of Luke's neck in soft, rhythmic pulses, coaxing him gently awake. Han's bare chest warmed Luke's back, and one long arm draped loosely across his waist, casually possessive in sleep. Luke made a cautious stretch and smiled, the sense of amazement and belonging nearly as warm as the heat of Han's skin mixed with the heat of Tatooine's early summer, creeping into the underground sleeping chamber. He'd never done this before, here …

Han's arm tightened as he shifted, and a low, questioning sound broke the early morning silences.

It wasn't the first time Han had done that on awaking, almost as if he was questioning whether Luke was real. Luke found the fingers at his waist and wove his own between them, and squeezed gently.

Han sighed, and nuzzled Luke's nape. “Morning.” Kisses pressed slowly up and across the tender skin beneath Luke's ear, and a firm ridge nestled intimately against his backside. “You feel good … ”

“So do you.” Luke moved, playfully.

Han's breath caught, then pushed out in a soft croon against Luke's skin as he pressed closer. “Hmm, _yeah_ … Always like this in in the mornings, are ya?”

“Don't know,” Luke whispered, soaring on the simple joy of Han's touch, his presence, his desire. “I never got to actually sleep with him ...”

“Hmm. Him, huh?” The words nudged, caressed. “Him who?”

 

Luke stilled and Han's brain kicked belatedly into gear, sending a cool rill across his skin. “Sorry,” he muttered, “didn't mean to … never mind.” Oh, he was awake now and not in the good way. _Solo, you idiot._

“No, it's okay.” Luke squeezed Han's fingers again and then pulled them upward, and Han felt the press of lips against his hand. “I … it's – just being back here, I think.”

Han hugged him and tried to stifle both the sigh of relief and the creeping thread of jealousy, with limited success. “An old friend here?”

“He was. He's dead now.”

 _Solo, you_ _ **idiot**_ _._ “Ah, kid, 'm sorry.”

“Han, it's okay.” Luke shifted, turning onto his back and looking over at Han in the dim light. Something Han couldn't name swam through Luke's eyes, but he didn't look upset. Then again, Luke rarely did these days. “He used to call me that too, sometimes,” Luke said softly, contemplative. 'Kid',” he explained, to Han's questioning look.

Hells. Han bit the inside of his lip against the urge to apologize again. He propped himself up on one elbow, the better to see his lover's face. “You wanna tell me about him?” he asked instead, playing a hunch.

A smile started in Luke's eyes and spread to his mouth, easy and warm. “He was a couple of years older than me. His people had money, but there weren't that many of us out in the sands then, so the schooling we had, we all got thrown in together. We were just kids, but he already had a speeder and knew his way around an engine, and he was learning to fly, and I thought he was the best thing I'd ever seen. I'm still not sure what he saw in me.” He sounded fond, and far away.

 _I'll bet I know._ Han drifted one hand slowly up the middle of Luke's chest, the dark blond hair he felt more than saw ticklish against his palm. “What was his name?”

“Biggs,” Luke said, still smiling. “Biggs Darklighter.”

Why did that sound very vaguely familiar? “You two were the local hellions, huh?”

 

Luke blinked, and looked up into beloved hazel eyes, hooded with a touch of worry Han would never admit to. “Not like that, or not exactly. Not much hell to raise in Anchorhead.”

He raised his hand and brushed the backs of his fingers gently just below Han's collarbone, a warm familiarity still new, infinitely precious. This still felt like the most amazing bit of luck sometimes, no matter what Ben had said about there being no such thing. “But hanging out with Biggs got me into more of the local garages, where the mechanics didn't have time for a kid like me but didn't want to get in bad with Biggs' father.”

“Now that sounds familiar,” Han said, smiling. “I was always in the repair bays, messing with everything I could get away with. 'Course, I didn't have much of anywhere else to be, either.”

Said easily enough, but Luke knew better, knew that Han truly hadn't had much of a choice. “I was pretty good with most engines by then; I'd grown up working on my uncle's speeder and the vaporators and whatever poor droids we'd bought from the Jawas. But Biggs had been working on his dad's T-16 and his dad was teaching him to fly, and I wanted to fly more than anything … ”

He saw it all again, the images so clear – the dim and bright of the Darklighter garage and the repair stations in Anchorhead and Tosche, stark sunlight diffused and redirected into the bays for light with less heat, the gleam of newly-cleaned parts and Biggs' tanned arm, his strong fingers smeared with dust and grease. The smells of metal and paint, of oil and sweat and skin …

“So he taught you to fly?” Han said, his voice a low rumble.

“He gave me my first real hands-on chance at it. Before that it had just been a few low-level flights and one suborbital when Uncle Owen had to travel; we didn't own a ship then. I think … that my uncle didn't want me getting ideas.” Luke moved his fingers to cover Han's where they'd been tracing aimless, enticing patterns on Luke's chest. “Now speeders, on the other hand ...”

Han grinned at him. “Had a need for speed, didja?”

“You could say that,” Luke said, grinning back. “So we built and we fixed and we fought the other guys for parts and then we raced what we'd fixed, and I learned to fly and made such an incredible nuisance of myself that my uncle surprised me when I was fifteen with a beat-up T-16 skyhopper.”

The shivering thrill of that moment – of seeing that scrappy thing tied to the floater trailer and literally shouting with joy, of barely registering Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen in the background as he'd rushed to look, of his uncle gruffly telling him that if he could clean it up and get it to run right, it was all his. He'd hugged them both for that, he remembered, but not enough. Not nearly enough.

 

“Good starter craft, that,” Han remarked, hoping to bump Luke back into the present again.

“They were, still are. I couldn't wait to tell Biggs.” The smile that curved Luke's mouth then took off years, and suddenly he was that kid again, smart-mouthed and stupidly confident, ready to take on the galaxy single-handed if necessary. “Biggs got them to give me lift space at Tosche station. They'd just hired on Fixer part-time, he was the best mechanic out of our group at the time or he thought he was, and _he_ said I wouldn't get it running. _I_ knew he was wrong.”

A gleam lit in those light blue eyes and oh, Han knew that stubborn look. The unknown Fixer hadn't stood a chance.

“I spent every spare moment for the next month working on it and Biggs was right there with me as much as he could. Maybe that was when … ”

“When you saw him as more than a friend?” Han prompted, after a minute of nothing more than Luke's fingers sweeping in light, absent caress across the back of Han's hand.

Luke smiled again but it was different, as if to more potent memory. “Not quite. There were places out west of our homestead,” he said, going out on an apparent tangent, “out in the Wastes and the Badlands, that were all jagged cliff and canyon – well, you've seen it.”

“Not really.” Han had made it a point, when he'd been stuck flying for Jabba, not to bother with any more of Tatooine than he'd absolutely had to. This sandpit planet had produced exactly one thing worth looking at and it was right here next to him.

“One of the worst of them," Luke said, "is Beggars Canyon. Narrow and twisty, and you never knew if you'd find a rockfall in the worst turns. So of course that was where we raced. Speeders and airbikes, but the real challenge was flying it, because it was just wide enough to take a skyhopper.”

“And by 'just wide enough' you mean 'not quite'.”

“It was a little close,” Luke said, and the gleam in his eyes brightened and so did that smile, and Han had no choice but to lean in and kiss it off of him. It was something they shared, one of the first things, in fact – that love of hard, fast flying that just couldn't be explained to anybody not a pilot.

Luke kissed him back, fingers slipping up Han's arm and around to tangle in the damp hair at his nape, delicious tingles traveling in their wake. Han enjoyed kissing – who didn't? – but Luke turned it into an end in itself, almost.

And it'd seduce Han into losing the thread completely here if he wasn't careful and this was important, somehow. Even if he still wasn't entirely sure he wanted to hear it. “So of course you raced it,” Han said, when he'd forced himself to stop.

“Of course,” and Luke's expression said it couldn't have been otherwise. “We all did, but I'd go out and practice more when I could meet Biggs there, see how fast we could take the turns, or power up the guns and look for womprats and other stuff to shoot. But that day it was just me and him, racing.”

“Who won?”

“I think – we both did.”

 

“ _Kid, you are_ _ **crazy**_ _!”_

_Luke laughed wildly as Biggs shouted at him, leaning back in the T-16's seat as the release of tension left him wired and shivery at the same time. “Four seconds!” he shouted back, jubilant, as Biggs jump-slid down the ladder of his own ship and stalked toward Luke's. “Four seconds faster, even with that rockfall, did you see that?!”_

“ _I saw you take that so close you scraped paint off_ _ **both**_ _laterals, you nutjob! Gods below, Luke, you can't cut it that fine!” Biggs threw both hands out to the sides and looked completely impressed and totally outraged and gorgeous with it._

_It was a look only Biggs could manage, Luke was sure, as he fought gravity and hauled himself up and out of the Tee's cockpit. “Sure I can, I just did!” he hollered, laughing again as he slid down the ladder. His knees did something weird when he landed, though, and he'd have ended up on his ass except that Biggs grabbed his arm. “Told you I could!”_

“ _You are crazy as a Raider, Skywalker!” Biggs told him. “You won't win that bet_ _ **dead**_ _, y'know.”_

“ _Oh, come on – ”_

“ _Luke – ”_

“ _Biggs, come_ _ **on**_ _. Really. I was fine and you know it. I'm never too close.”_

_Biggs hadn't let go of his arm. “Kid, you're the best bush pilot ever, you've got to be – ”_

_Luke grinned._

“ – _but I couldn't take it if something happened.”_

“ _Biggs – ”_

“ _Luke.” And something in his friend's dark eyes stopped Luke, something earnest and awkward and sincere. “Look, I – I care about you, okay?”_

_Luke's mouth parted a little. Wow. Really? “Hey, buddy. I care about you too, you know that, right?”_

“ _You don't get it.” Biggs brought both hands up now to rest on Luke's shoulders, and then his fingers slid up Luke's neck and into his hair, setting up a tingle in their wake. And Luke blinked, captured and held by the expression on Biggs' face as he leaned in close. “I_ _ **care**_ _about you. A_ _ **lot**_ _.”_

 

“And you know,” Luke said, drifting with the memory, “I never did remember what I was going to say to that, because that was when he kissed me.” And more than kissed …

Han's grin was knowing. “ And – right there, huh? Next to the 'hopper?”

“More under than next to, but – ” Luke grinned back, Han's cheerful lechery helping, somehow, to ease the pain of later loss. “Oh yeah.”

Han's dark head lowered. “Tell me,” he breathed, warm across Luke's ear.

And the words fell out then, all those things Luke had held close and painful-precious, falling out at last to be shared, gathered carefully up and held safe, recreated in the shelter of Han's mouth moving against Luke's skin.

 

_The smell of fuel cells and hot converters and metal. Of Biggs' skin, like he always smelled when he got warm – good clean sweat, all tangy male where everybody else just smelled like old Jawa robes. The bristle-tickle of that mustache that hadn't quite grown in yet. The gritty slip of Biggs' skin under Luke's hands, finally finally touching his friend in more than the playful wrestling that had fueled Luke's dreams._

_Strong, callused fingers opening Luke's own shirt, his pants, pushing beneath his underwear and touching_ _**him** _ _._

 _Holding him._ _**Moving** _ _on him._

And gods, how he'd _tasted_ –

“ – _Han_ – ”

“Right here, I got ya,” Han whispered, and kissed him deeply. Holding him. Moving on him, _with_ _him_ , right to the edge and over. Falling with him.

Catching him, safe, in that place he'd only ever been to with Han.

 

He dreamed, later on, of warm dark eyes and laughter, without pain and without regrets.

*

They'd arrived back from Tatooine about half a standard day ago. When he could, Han had slipped away and made his way to the Alliance archives, still a massy jumble of holos and datapads of all that private information that the galaxy at large didn't need to know yet, if ever.

He found the personnel record he wanted easily enough, though, and read it. It wasn't very long.

Now he just stared at the image on the terminal screen, his head propped against his fist and a tangled knot sitting in his stomach.

“Han?” Leia's voice.

“Yeah,” he said absently.

Her firm footfalls proceeded her. “You _are_ in here. When Threepio said you were in the archives room, I didn't quite believe it. Your usual hang-out, this isn't,” Leia said as she came up behind him. She stepped close and leaned her head on top of his, her arms coming around his shoulders with the ease of a sometime lover and long-time friend.

“Hmm.” Han breathed in the fragrance that always hung around her, but his eyes stayed on the screen.

Leia paused, probably at his lack of come-back. “Darklighter, Biggs,” she read softly, after a minute. “Pilot, X-Wings. Oh, he was from Tatooine. Killed in action over Yavin 4, in defence of Red Squadron and Commander Skywalker, during attack on first Death Star.”

A long, soft sigh, and a firm hug around Han's shoulders. “We lost so many there.” And she still hurt for all of them, Han heard it in her voice. Another reason he loved her. “He had a good face, Pilot Darklighter did,” Leia said. “You knew him?”

“Nope,” Han said, and had to clear his throat. “No, I never met him; he was just a voice on the comms for me – "

 

_"Luke, at that speed will you be able to pull out in time?"_

_"Hurry, Luke, they're coming in much faster this time. I can't hold them!"_

_"Hurry up, Luke!"_

_"I can't shake him!"_

 

“ – but Luke knew him.”

"He told you?"

"Yeah."

Hey," Leia said, after some moments of silence. "What is it?"

Han swallowed, with effort, around words that seemed stuck in his throat. "If ... if I'd – turned around sooner ... "

He felt Leia take a deep breath, and felt her release it in another long, long sigh. "You can't think like that, scoundrel," she murmured, and hugged him again. "It's done. You learn from it and then you go on, the war's taught me that if nothing else. Chewing on the past will just make you crazy, and you've been crazy since I met you, you don't need any more help with that."

Han snorted, and smiled despite himself. "Thanks a lot."

"Anytime," Leia said, and kissed the top of his head.

And that was good advice, except that – that wasn't the problem, not really, not exactly. Because if that guy, Biggs, had lived? Would Han's own life have been a lot different, and a lot lonelier?

Would Luke's have been happier?

Was that the most terrible part of love, discovering that you could want somebody's else happiness more than you wanted your own?

Maybe he should say he was sorry, but he wasn't sure he could, not and truly mean it. And Luke might realize that. And there had to be, surely, somewhere, a limit to just how much even Luke could forgive him for.

*

*

*

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> 11/8/16  
> Aided and abetted by culturevulture73 and HollyC, as per usual: you people are evil. Just sayin'. Particular love to CV, who made the ending much, much better. Written with kind thoughts and thanks to roane, who has been so kind herself to comment on some of my previous efforts and whom I know is sorely lacking for fic for her fav pairing - I don't know if this qualifies as "shenanigans," but you can let me know. Hope this pleases :-)


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